Many office and public buildings today are constructed with so called external curtain walls, i.e., large glass facades. Although such structures are aesthetically pleasing and very architecturally attractive, protecting such buildings from conventional bomb attack as well as chemical and biological attack poses an enormous challenge. A standard curtain wall exposed to a bomb blast instantly becomes a source of flying debris of sharp shards which are often more deadly than the bomb blast itself.
Window panes made of coated or laminated glass are known to stand up significantly better than regular glass panes to the effects of bomb blasts, but nevertheless these types of window panes do have a threshold beyond which they too shatter and become a source of flying sharp debris.